


exhaustion

by miss_belivet



Series: the wonder poison archive [5]
Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Depression, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Internal Conflict, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-22 18:49:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11386239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_belivet/pseuds/miss_belivet
Summary: Some mornings, Isabel wakes up and finds that she doesn't have the energy to get out of her bed. Diana helps.





	exhaustion

**Author's Note:**

> Set during Nearby.
> 
> Just before they lose touch in late 1929. At this point, they have known one another for 11 years and have been meeting every so often for coffee for 5 years while Diana follows Isabel around the world to make sure she truly is reformed.

The worst weeks come when all of the fight drains from Isabel's mind; the searing hatred she has nurtured to a blistering flame gives way to exhaustion. It's slow, creeping, and then one morning even waking up seems too much an effort.

On those mornings, Isabel will lay as still and stiff as a corpse in her bed, too tired to open her eyes.

Although thinking takes far too much energy, her mind races at a steady clip. She cycles through formulas and the compounds that would be waiting for her if she still worked in a lab. She calculates the potency of an overnight distillation. She does it again in three dead languages, pictures how she would document each using cuneiform in her old notebook. After the pseudo-productive thoughts become taxing, she will list every piece of clothing she knows to be in her laundry hamper. She counts her breaths and wonders how many more she has; each scorches her throat more than the last.

Diana finds her on one of these mornings, when they're in Boston in 1929, when she misses an appointment they set for coffee.

That morning, the sounds from the street below are enough to exhaust Isabel.

The strength is sapped from every cell of Isabel's being, and she is compiling a grocery list that she cannot afford. When her front door creaks open, prickling irritation crawls up her spine until she feels she could scream. Diana doesn't have a key, but she has proven that she is capable of breaking in whenever she thinks too much about Isabel's potential for murder.

Isabel wishes she could kill again in that moment. She cycles through memories of testing her poisons on captured soldiers in the time it takes Diana to reach the bedroom.

The floorboards groan under Diana's weight, and a warm hand presses itself to Isabel's forehead. She flinches. Diana's intrusion on her, in bed and unmasked, is a violation of the highest order. Her pajamas are practical and modest, but the thin cotton is not a barrier strong enough to make Isabel feel safe.

"You're awake."

Isabel makes a noise somewhere between a groan and a hum.

"Are you sick?"

This time, she lifts a brow. The click of Diana's tongue that follows tells Isabel that her caustic intent was relayed through the small movement.

Everything is silent for another long moment, and Isabel begins thinking that Diana has finally flown off to annoy her secretary or slap a few minor Grecian gods upside the head a few times. She isn't prepared for the bed to dip down beside her, along the length of her body.

_"What are you doing."_

Her first words of the morning are harsh and hoarse; she always has trouble finding her voice after a long night in bed.

"You are not well, and I am the only person you know in this city. It would be cruel to leave you."

Isabel wants to shout and kick until Diana leaves, or maybe even cry at the injustice of it all, but instead she musters what little strength remains in her limbs and turns herself onto her side, away from Diana. 

For a moment, everything is still.

Then an arm slides over Isabel's waist, and a firm body presses against her from behind. She flinches, and Diana rests her forehead on the nape of her neck, as if to share her own energy with Isabel. Her breath is warm and humid at the collar of Isabel's pajamas, and the intimacy of such a touch is not lost on the stiff woman. It's something she hasn't experienced in years; something she never thought to experience again.

"There is no shame in weakness, Isabel."

She feels trapped. She's stuck inside her own body, inside of the pressing weight of her exhaustion, inside Diana's embrace. She takes one breath, two, and then Diana's hand is flat on her sternum.

The gentle tapping of the fingers over her heart guides her to breathe evenly again, and eventually her pulse keeps time with Diana's steady tempo.

She's too tired to remain stiff and unyielding forever, so eventually she allows herself to relax. She floats on the current of her fatigue, never quite sleeping, but dozing enough to appreciate the warmth of Diana in the end.

xXx

Diana enjoys the embrace too much, perhaps. The hours spent in that bed, curled against a small body, are the best she has had in a decade; she cannot erase the memory of her elbow tucked into the curve of a waist or the feathery tickle of Isabel's hair from her mind. She feels Isabel's heart beating beneath her palm for days on end.

She hasn't allowed herself to be so close to anyone since the night in Veld.

She allowed herself to be close to the woman who killed Steve.

No, she didn't kill Steve.

But her poisons did.

She doesn't see Isabel again for two years.


End file.
